By: Allegra Leitner

At the Sidney Lumet event on January 28th, Professor Rosenbaum asked Mr. Lumet why, throughout his career as a director, he has been drawn to making films that are centered around the law.  Mr. Lumet responded with, “Because it’s easy!”  He went on to talk about the built in conflict of the legal system and how it provides the ideal “good guy versus bad guy” setting.  His film The Verdict, for example, pits a woman who is brain dead against the hospital that has made her that way and is trying to cover its tracks.  The inherent drama built into the legal system makes it a popular setting for much of our society’s cultural media today.  It is portrayed in film, from Mr. Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men to the more recent Michael Clayton, television dramas like Law and Order and Boston Legal, and even in reality television with shows like Judge Judy.  Many of these films and television shows present the law as containing more than just conflict between the parties to an action, but delve deeper and illustrate the conflict that exists between the moral and the legal spheres.  And perhaps it is this deeper conflict and the idea that what is morally correct may not be legally right that actually draws people – audiences, writers, actors, and directors – to using the legal system as a dramatic setting.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am and is filed under Culture Forum Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.